The original Lightning Network white paper and the "Capacity Increases for the Bitcoin System" scaling plan are over FIVE YEARS old - roughly half of Bitcoin's existence - and both are abject, dismal failures. Everything we argued has been prove

Lightning Network white paper made the outrageous claim

The bitcoin protocol can encompass the global financial transac- tion volume in all electronic payment systems today, without a single custodial third party holding funds or requiring participants to have anything more than a computer using a broadband connection.

Yes, Constant Reader, they claimed Bitcoin could scale to include literally every single financial transaction on Earth with nothing more than a mid level 2016-era PC and broadband connection.

The 2015 Capacity Increases for the Bitcoin System "roadmap" was likewise riddled with blatant falsehoods

The particular proposal [Segwit] amounts to a 4MB blocksize increase at worst.

At worst? Segwit gave Bitcoin a 2X increase at best. In practice, the increase was about 1.7X. And we told them that.

Anyone who's followed this sub or who is willing to do the research can discover the mountains of posts that debunked the many flaws in Bitcoin's "scaling plans." Re-detailing all the flaws and disinformation in the plans for BTC is irrelevant at this point.

The relevant issue is this.

Everything. We. Predicted. Has. Come. To. Pass.

The people in this sub, myself included, were booted out of rbitcoin and trolled out of other bitcoin discussion because we had the temerity to point out that the BTC scaling plan wasn't really a scaling plan at all, but rather a poison pill.

We were right about everything, but lacked the political force to impose our views on the community. Instead, a suicide pact was imposed on Bitcoin.

And the punch line is this:

There is still no scaling plan for BTC.

The real scaling plan was the one suggested to us by Satoshi:

https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/485/

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit

That plan - a hard-fork block size increase - was the scaling plan until the "Capacity Increases for the Bitcoin System" non-plan was enacted.

BCH follows the original scaling plan and social contract for Bitcoin that was in force from 2009-2015.

So here we are, Constant Reader. It's five years later, and everything the big-blockers warned about, has come to pass. BTC is still hopelessly congested. Lightning has failed to deliver any meaningful scaling. There is no plan to scale the base layer, and any hard fork attempt would take years to organize and most likely result in yet another coin split, with the small block branch retaining the "ticker" (which is apparently the "feature that matters most to the market.)

Meanwhile Big-blockers upgraded bitcoin with BCH, and have demonstrated that hard forks can be safely performed & that blocks can be safely made orders-of-magnitude larger.

And yet, despite proving itself, due to a tidal wave of constant trolling, BCH remains a red-headed stepkid to BTC. There remains absolutely zero correlation between actual facts of the technology and "the market."

At this point I am convinced that BTC could simply stop mining blocks altogether, and the price would still go up.

I entered this market many years ago. I'm old enough to remember when Satoshi's scaling plan was still "the scaling plan." And BCH is the Bitcoin I thought I was getting when I got involved.

It is said that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Fortunately for me, that's a long time. But the irrationality continues. There seems to be no market consequences for BTC's complete failure to accomplish its goals, or vindication for BCH's ability to achieve its goals - despite constant unrelenting attacks.

I leave you, Constant Reader, with the rhetorical question: will markets ever realize they've been bamboozled? And if so, how?